UBS & London Fund Manager & Ben Davies: Gold Is Headed For A Major Uptrend This Year, This Selling In Gold & Silver Is Unsustainable, And We May Be Seeing A V-Shaped Bottom In Gold

In America, the Fed would face huge pressure to hold onto its bonds rather than crystalize losses as yields rise — in other words, to recoil from unwinding QE at the proper moment. The authors argue that it would be tantamount to throwing in the towel on inflation, the start of debt monetisation, or “fiscal dominance”. Markets would be merciless. Bond vigilantes would soon price in a very different world.

Investors have of course been fretting about this for some time. Scott Minerd from Guggenheim Partners thinks the Fed is already trapped and may have to talk up gold to $10,000 an ounce to ensure that its own bullion reserves cover mounting liabilities.

What is new is that these worries are surfacing openly in Fed circles. The Mishkin paper almost certainly reflects a strand of thinking at Constitution Avenue, so there may be more than meets the eye in last week’s Fed minutes, which rattled bourses across the world with hints of early exit from QE.